The First Builders Part One: The Imagimeter Shards
Chapter 1: The Ruffling of Distant Cloaks -3,074 BDPC Destruction of Planet Crux- -Gallant 5- -Sector 360- -Omnibrick Trench- He stared sadly at the flaming remains of the shuttle, moaning lowly and cursing his bad luck. Sparks flew from what once had been a majestic wing- a wing that had been reduced to sizzling studs that glowed of the freezing wastes of Gallant 5. The man turned, his glowing, violet cloak seething with dark energy and swirling around him like a purple maelstrom. Aphotic power reverberated from the deep expanses of his shadowy hood- a hood that completely covered any visage- if he even had a head to show an expression- to face another hooded Minifigure. “Will it be possible to fix the Shard?” His voice was thick, as if his throat was covered in webs and the bristling hairs of eyed legged creatures, but had a very dark sense of authority about it; a voice that threatened to annihilate entire civilizations if provoked. The person he faced responded if a far more relaxing tone; a sound that was so soft, so calm, it was genuine. A voice that sounded like honey, of milk, of everything sweet and scrumptious, a voice that whispered the words compassion and love into the breeze. A voice that could clearly, however, snap out like a whip and trip someone. “I doubt it; there are no resources in this desolate, cubic spit of land. And with our limited control of the Element, I don’t think we can conjure anything worthwhile.” The man- the one who obviously held a bit of authority- nodded gravely. “I feared that, my daughter.”, then, as an afterthought, he continued, “Are the Shards safe?” The man’s daughter, the Minifigure with the wondrous voice, shook her head, her body taking a rigid, grim posture. She needed to words to confirm her father’s suspicions. “I must leave- now.” “But father-!” The young woman cried, but the man held up his gloved hand. “I am sorry. I must retrace the Shards, they must be taken back. I’m sure- I know- the survived the crash, and I must retrieve them.” “Let me go!” His daughter pleaded, “The Nation proved that there are terrible creatures on this world- capable of tearing a Pure-Spark apart!”, she flinched as she said the word ‘Pure-Spark’, for she wholeheartedly didn’t agree with the concept of one race being higher, better, and ‘purer’ than any other. However, she knew that if this was the last time she would see her dad- he’s want her to say something like that. “Oh, my daughter. You have grown up so much. You have seen more than most can say, have witnessed both peace and war- but you still have many centuries ahead of you. I am old, and if I don’t come back- I need you to continue the quest.” The girl floated backwards in disbelief. She couldn’t get herself to speak. The young ‘Pure-Spark’ never really liked her father- he was a typical ‘holier than thou’ believer, thinking himself above everyone else. His battle lust and hunger for power and riches had often made the girl think of his as evil- but he was her father, and with his death probably moments away, she had forgotten all his misdoings. The master waved his hand, motioning for another of the four hooded beings to join him, and began to float away. “I’ll see you again.” His daughter whispered, but her father was already far away. Chapter 2: The Pass The hooded leader kneeled on the air, hovering just inches over the ground with his cloak flapping weirdly in the stale wind. A gloved hand peeked out of his cave, flexing experimentally as it reached towards the horribly mangled assortment of bricks before him. At least five bricks- including three fully operational studs- had been half melted and glued together in a horrendous pile of sizzling junk that resembled a marzipan bar at the bottom of a volcano. But the strangest noticeable thing was the sticky green ooze that covered- and probably had originally fused together- the bricks. He signaled to the other Minifigure- his second in command- to stop inspecting the constantly receding rock walls of Omnibrick Trench; a sign that they were nearing a place known as Hingehurl Pass. All evidence provided by Operation Firestar told that the pass was a very dangerous place- monstrous for its volcanic activity and earthquakes. But these bricks weren’t melted and glued together by either lava or a boulder plummeting from the sky. The bricks were part of the Shard Seeker, the ship the hooded people had arrived on, meaning the pieces were near-indestructible, for they were imbued with enough Imagination to run an entire city for a day. Each and every one of them. “Something powerful did this.” The leader growled in his menacing, reverberating voice. “Something very powerful.” His second in command walked up to him and inspected the mess. “I agree, my lord.” He made a gesture to pick the smoking debris up, but his master’s gloved hand shot out from its swaying sleeve and grabbed his hand in a grasp that could crush a wrist that didn’t know what was happening. “My lord!” The second in command gasped, nearly being knocked from his magical perch and onto the ground with the force of his masters grip. He quickly twisted his arm and clenched his two fingered fist, luckily packing up enough muscle to avoid a ‘crack!’. “Something powerful did this”, his master said again, releasing his right hand man’s right hand, “Meaning it has been rendered unusable and is probably dangerous.” The leader pointed forward, to a trail of the icky, dark emerald ooze. “Follow that, Crystale. I’ll be with you in a moment.” The second in command, obviously known as Crystale, nodded severely, flexed his throbbing hand, and then floated three meters into the air and started off, his dark violet cloak trailing chaotic energy behind him. ---- Half an hour later, the leader bumped into Crystale, who seemed frozen on the spot. He frowned under his cloak, and then peered over his second in command’s shoulder. He also froze in place. “How in the Nine Nexus’ are we to get through that!?” “You tell me, boss.” Crystale mumbled back, his eyes probably bulging in their unseen sockets. Before them, there was a perilous path of nothing but slowly spinning boulders with no flat edges. Boulders that were floating above a mass of nothing but magma only about fifty meters below. Columns of lava often shot up from the bubbling pit, swirling into the air in a whirlwind of steam as the nexus’ of fire jetted through the hot and humid air, stopping many meters above the boulders and exploding in a shower of molten sparks. Sometimes, the columns of flame even brought down some of the strangely floating boulders, leaving a wide and close to impassable gap to the other side. “Oh dear- Hingehurl Pass…” Chapter 3: Beware, the Beast -Gallant 5- -Sector 363- -Hingehurl Pass- About the twentieth spout of magma shot from the fiery abyss, spiraling upwards in a maelstrom of steam. “Look out!” Crystale cried, leaping onto his master and sending them both gliding to the next boulder platform. The one they had been on seconds before was hit on the side by the jet of lava, obliterating almost half of the rock and sending it rolling on the air. It struck the floating bit of ground that the two hooded Minifigures had just landed on, slamming into it, causing both of them to explode into a shower of flaming bricks that plummeted into the bubbling mass beneath them. The blast knocked the two men right of their platform, but, luckily, their levitation spells kept them hovering. “I could have done it myself, my unworthy number two.” The leader growled, patting his hip to extinguish the flame that had caught on his cloak. Crystale nearly slapped his master, but kept his gloved hand in check. His leader didn’t know how to say ‘Thank you’. Then, all of a sudden, another spout blasted up from below them, literally cleaving the floating rock they were on in half. “Argch!”, Crystale yelped, slapping at his face to put out the flames that had started on it. He fell off the burning half of stone that he was on, once again held up only because of his innate ability to levitate. He dodged another killing torrent of lava, spinning around in mid-air just to see his leader zipping across the treacherous canyon, his entire cloak in fire and his screams echoing throughout the entire natural complex. After summersaulting over yet another spout, Crystale did the same. ---- The dynamic duo arrived at the other side of the Pass a couple of minutes later, rolling about on the hard stone to snuff out the incessantly licking flames. After that was done, they sat down on some equally hard slabs of stone to take a break, Crystale drawing two tubes from his cloak as he did. He tossed one of them- holding a sticky, brownish substance- to his leader, yanking off the top of his own simultaneously. The tube that he threw just bounced off the leader’s hooded head, not even making his seemingly paralyzed body turn. He was staring intently at their surroundings. Before the two was a cave, one so dark inside that he doubted he would be able to see his hand of he put it an inch from his face. Around them were just jagged shards of splintered rock, many sizzling from little droplets of magma that sprayed up from the dangerous Hingehurl Pass behind them. The black-green ooze that had shown them the way led into the cave. But the leader was only subconsciously looking to the cavern. In his mind, he was replaying the last few minutes he had spent with his daughter in the crash site, promising that he’d return. He hoped that, for the Nation, for Operation Firestar, and for his daughter, that whatever was in there wasn’t going to rob his of his Spark. Crystale was half swallowing and half chewing the nourishing guck inside his tube, shaking his head at his distanced companion, when something caught his eye. A dim, light blue glow. Crystale floated back upright, moving towards the glow, which was coming from behind a boulder. “No…” he muttered, “It can’t be…” He pushed the jagged rock aside and- let the Nation behold!- there was one of the three artifacts they were looking for. A fiercely glowing shard, reverberating with an inner energy and light- an Imagination Shard. “Oi! Creatra!” The leader shook himself from his dreamy state, surprised that an underling had dared speak his real name. He was about to lecture the hooded man when he saw what Cystale was holding. “By the Nine Nexus’! A Shard!” He grinned widely, but then something else caught his eye- markings on the rock that the shard had been under. Curious, he floated towards it. There were carved pictures of nine lavishly dressed people with slight bits of armor, battling a monstrous creature. It looked like a giant, insectoid lizard with six, bulbous eyes and four huge wings, along with four more on the end of its whip-like tail. Enormous spines ran down its scaly back, and snake-like fangs dripped venom, along with claws that looked sharp enough to carve a perfect self-portrait from diamond. Creatra was knocked from his contemplations by another thing that Crystale said. “Eraweb eht Olliroz Tsaet… what does that mean?” “What!?” Creatra squeaked, knowing exactly what it meant. “Eraweb’ eht Oliroz Tsaet.” “I know what it mean!”, he growled. Then after a moment’s pause, he continued, “It is the ancient tongue of the Nation- it means… ‘Beware, the Zorilo Beast”. Category:Pages Needing Formatting Category:Pre-Gameplay Era Category:Stories Based on New Characters